Radeon R700
Encyclopedia
The Radeon R700 is the engineering codename for a graphics processing unit
series developed by Advanced Micro Devices
under the ATI
brand name. The foundation chip, codenamed RV770, was announced and demonstrated on June 16, 2008 as part of the FireStream 9250 and Cinema 2.0
initiative launch media event, with official release of the HD4800 series on June 25, 2008. Other variants include enthusiast-oriented RV790, mainstream product RV730, RV740 and entry-level RV710.
s and 1 MADD/transcendental ALU
. The RV770 retains the R600's 4 Quad ROP cluster count;, however, they are faster and now have dedicated hardware-based AA resolve in addition to the shader-based resolve of the R600 architecture. The RV770 also has 10 texture units, each of which can handle 4 addresses, 16 FP32 samples, and 4 FP32 filtering functions per clock cycle.
The SPU count of other variants of Radeon R700 family are as follows:
memory, which runs at 900 MHz giving an effective transfer rate of 3.6 GHz and memory bandwidth of up to 115 GB/s. The internal ring bus from the R520
and R600 has been replaced by the combination of a crossbar and an internal hub.
, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
and VC-1
decoding and the support for dual video streams, the Advanced Video Processor (AVP) also saw an upgrade with DVD upscaling capability and dynamic contrast feature. The RV770 series GPU also supports xvYCC
color space output and 7.1 surround sound output (LPCM
, AC3, DTS) over HDMI
. The RV770 GPU also supports an Accelerated Video Transcoding (AVT) feature, which has video transcoding functions being assisted by the GPU, through stream processing
.
This generation of dual-GPU design retains the use of a PCI Express bridge, PLX
PEX 8647 with PCI Express 2.0 support, allowing two GPUs on the same PCI Express
slot with doubled bandwidth over the past generation of product (Radeon HD 3870 X2). Current generation of dual-GPU design also features an interconnect for inter-GPU communications through the implementation of a CrossFire X SidePort on each GPU, giving extra 5 GB/s full-duplex inter-GPU bandwidth. These two features increase total bandwidth for dual-GPU designs to 21.8 GB/s. At this point, the CrossFire X Sideport isn't enabled by default in the drivers.
memory, while the Radeon HD 4870 uses GDDR5
memory.
Another variant, the Radeon HD 4830 was updated on October 23, 2008, featuring the RV770 LE GPU with a 256-bit GDDR3 memory interface, and 640 shader processors. Basically the RV770 LE is a RV770 with some functional units disabled.
Dual GPU products using two RV770 GPUs, codenamed R700, were also announced. One product named Radeon HD 4870 X2, featuring 2×1GB GDDR5
memory, was released on August 12, 2008, while another dual-GPU product, the Radeon HD 4850 X2, with GDDR3
memory and lower clock speeds, is also available.
A minor update was introduced on April 2, 2009 with the launch of Radeon HD 4890 graphics cards based on the RV790 GPU. Featuring an improved design with decoupling capacitor
s to reduce signal noise, altered ASIC power distribution and re-timed the whole GPU chip, which resulted in a slight increase in die size but overall much better stability at high clock rates. On August 18, 2009, AMD released a stripped down variant of the RV790 GPU called the RV790GT that is used by the Radeon HD 4860 which is now available in all markets.
, DDR3 or DDR2
video memory. AMD claims these two products have maximums of 20 W and 25 W of power consumption under full load, respectively.
Graphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit or GPU is a specialized circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory in such a way so as to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display...
series developed by Advanced Micro Devices
Advanced Micro Devices
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. or AMD is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Sunnyvale, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for commercial and consumer markets...
under the ATI
ATI Technologies
ATI Technologies Inc. was a semiconductor technology corporation based in Markham, Ontario, Canada, that specialized in the development of graphics processing units and chipsets. Founded in 1985 as Array Technologies Inc., the company was listed publicly in 1993 and was acquired by Advanced Micro...
brand name. The foundation chip, codenamed RV770, was announced and demonstrated on June 16, 2008 as part of the FireStream 9250 and Cinema 2.0
AMD Cinema 2.0
Cinema 2.0, as described by Advanced Micro Devices , is the new gaming experience brought by the Radeon HD 4800 series GPUs with teraFLOPS computing capabilities, and leading-edge solutions from partners to enable photorealistic graphics with interactive features just like in computer games.The...
initiative launch media event, with official release of the HD4800 series on June 25, 2008. Other variants include enthusiast-oriented RV790, mainstream product RV730, RV740 and entry-level RV710.
Execution units
The RV770 extends the R600's unified shader architecture by increasing the stream processing unit count to 800 units (up from 320 units in the R600), which are grouped into 10 SIMD cores composed of 16 shader cores containing 4 FP MADD/DP ALUALU
ALU, alu or Alu may refer to:*Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Ljubljana*Assisted Living Unit, care residency that usually includes the regular provision of a range of personal services*Alcatel-Lucent, a company traded on the NYSE...
s and 1 MADD/transcendental ALU
ALU
ALU, alu or Alu may refer to:*Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Ljubljana*Assisted Living Unit, care residency that usually includes the regular provision of a range of personal services*Alcatel-Lucent, a company traded on the NYSE...
. The RV770 retains the R600's 4 Quad ROP cluster count;, however, they are faster and now have dedicated hardware-based AA resolve in addition to the shader-based resolve of the R600 architecture. The RV770 also has 10 texture units, each of which can handle 4 addresses, 16 FP32 samples, and 4 FP32 filtering functions per clock cycle.
The SPU count of other variants of Radeon R700 family are as follows:
| Product/series | GPU codename | Stream processing units (SPU) | Memory Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Radeon HD 4890 | RV790XT | 800 | 256-bit GDDR5 |
| Radeon HD 4870 | RV770XT | ||
| Radeon HD 4860 | RV790GT | 640 | |
| Radeon HD 4850 | RV770PRO | 800 | 256-bit GDDR3 |
| Radeon HD 4830 | RV770LE | 640 | |
| Radeon HD 4770 | RV740 | 128-bit GDDR5 | |
| Radeon HD 4750 | RV740PRO | 480 | |
| Radeon HD 4730 | RV770CE | 640 | |
| Radeon HD 4670 | RV730XT | 320 | 128-bit GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 |
| Radeon HD 4650 | RV730PRO | ||
| Radeon HD 4550 | RV710 | 80 | 64-bit DDR3 |
| Radeon HD 4350 | 64-bit DDR2 |
Memory and internal buses
RV770 features a 256-bit memory controller and is the first GPU to support GDDR5GDDR5
GDDR5 SDRAM is a type of high performance DRAM graphics card memory designed for computer applications requiring high bandwidth...
memory, which runs at 900 MHz giving an effective transfer rate of 3.6 GHz and memory bandwidth of up to 115 GB/s. The internal ring bus from the R520
Radeon R520
ATI's "R520" core is the foundation for a line of DirectX 9.0c and OpenGL 2.0 3D accelerator X1000 video cards. It is ATI's first major architectural overhaul since the "R300" core and is highly optimized for Shader Model 3.0. The Radeon X1000 series using the core was introduced on October 5,...
and R600 has been replaced by the combination of a crossbar and an internal hub.
Multimedia features
The RV770 GPU saw the implementation of UVD 2 (only available on Windows operating system), offering full hardware MPEG-2MPEG-2
MPEG-2 is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission...
, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 or AVC is a standard for video compression, and is currently one of the most commonly used formats for the recording, compression, and distribution of high definition video...
and VC-1
VC-1
VC-1 is the informal name of the SMPTE 421M video codec standard, which was initially developed as a proprietary video format by Microsoft before it was released as a formal SMPTE standard video format on April 3, 2006...
decoding and the support for dual video streams, the Advanced Video Processor (AVP) also saw an upgrade with DVD upscaling capability and dynamic contrast feature. The RV770 series GPU also supports xvYCC
XvYCC
xvYCC or Extended-gamut YCC is a color space that can be used in the video electronics of television sets to support a gamut 1.8 times as large as that of the sRGB color space...
color space output and 7.1 surround sound output (LPCM
LPCM
Linear pulse-code modulation is a method of encoding audio information digitally. The term also refers collectively to formats using this method of encoding...
, AC3, DTS) over HDMI
HDMI
HDMI is a compact audio/video interface for transmitting uncompressed digital data. It is a digital alternative to consumer analog standards, such as radio frequency coaxial cable, composite video, S-Video, SCART, component video, D-Terminal, or VGA...
. The RV770 GPU also supports an Accelerated Video Transcoding (AVT) feature, which has video transcoding functions being assisted by the GPU, through stream processing
Stream processing
Stream processing is a computer programming paradigm, related to SIMD , that allows some applications to more easily exploit a limited form of parallel processing...
.
GPU interconnect enhancements
PLX Technology
PLX Technology is an integrated circuit company based in Sunnyvale, California.It supplies system-interconnect silicon-based semiconductors and firmware for the enterprise communications, storage, server, compute, embedded-control, and consumer storage markets...
PEX 8647 with PCI Express 2.0 support, allowing two GPUs on the same PCI Express
PCI Express
PCI Express , officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a computer expansion card standard designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X, and AGP bus standards...
slot with doubled bandwidth over the past generation of product (Radeon HD 3870 X2). Current generation of dual-GPU design also features an interconnect for inter-GPU communications through the implementation of a CrossFire X SidePort on each GPU, giving extra 5 GB/s full-duplex inter-GPU bandwidth. These two features increase total bandwidth for dual-GPU designs to 21.8 GB/s. At this point, the CrossFire X Sideport isn't enabled by default in the drivers.
Radeon HD 4800
The Radeon HD 4850 was announced on June 19, 2008 while the Radeon HD 4870 was announced on June 25, 2008. They are both based on the RV770 GPU, packing 956 million transistors and being produced on a 55 nm process. The Radeon HD 4850 currently uses GDDR3GDDR3
Graphics Double Data Rate 3 is a graphics card-specific memory technology, designed by ATI Technologies with the collaboration of JEDEC.It has much the same technological base as DDR2, but the power and heat dispersal requirements have been reduced somewhat, allowing for higher performance memory...
memory, while the Radeon HD 4870 uses GDDR5
GDDR5
GDDR5 SDRAM is a type of high performance DRAM graphics card memory designed for computer applications requiring high bandwidth...
memory.
Another variant, the Radeon HD 4830 was updated on October 23, 2008, featuring the RV770 LE GPU with a 256-bit GDDR3 memory interface, and 640 shader processors. Basically the RV770 LE is a RV770 with some functional units disabled.
Dual GPU products using two RV770 GPUs, codenamed R700, were also announced. One product named Radeon HD 4870 X2, featuring 2×1GB GDDR5
GDDR5
GDDR5 SDRAM is a type of high performance DRAM graphics card memory designed for computer applications requiring high bandwidth...
memory, was released on August 12, 2008, while another dual-GPU product, the Radeon HD 4850 X2, with GDDR3
GDDR3
Graphics Double Data Rate 3 is a graphics card-specific memory technology, designed by ATI Technologies with the collaboration of JEDEC.It has much the same technological base as DDR2, but the power and heat dispersal requirements have been reduced somewhat, allowing for higher performance memory...
memory and lower clock speeds, is also available.
A minor update was introduced on April 2, 2009 with the launch of Radeon HD 4890 graphics cards based on the RV790 GPU. Featuring an improved design with decoupling capacitor
Decoupling capacitor
A decoupling capacitor is a capacitor used to decouple one part of an electrical network from another. Noise caused by other circuit elements is shunted through the capacitor, reducing the effect they have on the rest of the circuit....
s to reduce signal noise, altered ASIC power distribution and re-timed the whole GPU chip, which resulted in a slight increase in die size but overall much better stability at high clock rates. On August 18, 2009, AMD released a stripped down variant of the RV790 GPU called the RV790GT that is used by the Radeon HD 4860 which is now available in all markets.
Radeon HD 4700
The Radeon HD 4700 series was announced on April 28, 2009. The Radeon HD 4770, is based on the RV740 GPU, packs 826 million transistors and being produced on the latest 40 nm process. The Radeon HD 4730 was introduced June 8, 2009, unlike the RV740 based Radeon HD 4770, the 4730 is a stripped down 55 nm RV770 GPU, named the RV770CE. The 4730 packs 956 million transistors, and uses GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus. On September 9, 2009, the RV740PRO based Radeon HD 4750 was released exclusively to the Chinese market. The Radeon HD 4750 is based on the 40 nm RV740 of the Radeon HD 4770 but features a lower clock speed and the absence of a six-pin auxiliary power input.Radeon HD 4600
The Radeon HD 4600 series was announced on September 10, 2008. All variants are based on the RV730 GPU, packing 514 million transistors and being produced on a 55 nm process. The PCIe version 4600 series products do not require external power connectors. More recently, the AGP version of the 4670 has been released. This does require one molex connector.Radeon HD 4300/HD 4500
The Radeon HD 4350 and Radeon HD 4550 were announced on September 30, 2008, both based on the RV710 GPU, packing 242 million transistors and being produced on a 55 nm process. Both products use either GDDR3GDDR3
Graphics Double Data Rate 3 is a graphics card-specific memory technology, designed by ATI Technologies with the collaboration of JEDEC.It has much the same technological base as DDR2, but the power and heat dispersal requirements have been reduced somewhat, allowing for higher performance memory...
, DDR3 or DDR2
DDR2 SDRAM
DDR2 SDRAM is a double data rate synchronous dynamic random-access memory interface. It supersedes the original DDR SDRAM specification and has itself been superseded by DDR3 SDRAM...
video memory. AMD claims these two products have maximums of 20 W and 25 W of power consumption under full load, respectively.
New market strategy
- According to Phil HesterPhil HesterPhil Hester is the name of:*Phillip Doyce Hester , former chief technology officer of Advanced Micro Devices*Phil Hester , comic book artist and writer...
and Dave Orton, the firm has used a new strategy for the graphics market. Future GPU architectures will undergo small updates (presumably a die shrinkDie shrinkThe term "die shrink" refers to a simple semiconductor scaling of semiconductor devices, mainly transistors. The act of shrinking a die is to create a somewhat identical circuitry using a more advanced fabrication process, usually involving an advance of lithographic node...
at fabrication half-nodes, minor architectural changes, improvements to performance and power consumption, probably as well as implementation of newer APIApplication programming interfaceAn application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
support if available) 6 months after first release, meaning the first GPU cores having only a 6-month product cycle. For mainstream and value segments, the product cycle will instead be 12 months without architectural alterations. The planned successor, presumably codenamed the Radeon R800Radeon R800The Evergreen series is a family of GPUs developed by Advanced Micro Devices for its Radeon line under the ATI brand name.-Release:The existence was spotted on a presentation slide from AMD Technology Analyst Day July 2007 as "R8xx"...
, will be targeted to launch on an even smaller fabrication process than the half-generation, while expecting that the Radeon R800 will be compatible with the next major version of DirectXDirectXMicrosoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay,...
APIApplication programming interfaceAn application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
both of which are aimed at a 2009 launch. - AMD is also shifting focus on releasing products. Whereas the old strategy consisted of designing the enthusiast-level GPU and then stripping it down in stages for cheaper models, AMD plans to reverse this strategy and develop foundation GPUs for entry-level and mainstream markets, and then release cards with an extra foundation GPU to increase performance for the enthusiast market.
Chipset table
- Comparison of AMD graphics processing units